Following the motto of the international project RISK CHANGE, Migration is a natural law: everything moves, everybody migrates, this symposium aims to raise questions about limitations on today’s mobility. As the program that runs parallel to Black Disguises exhibition, it gathers theorists and empiricists of different profiles and thematizes the extremes of modern society. One the one side – movability, mobility and intercultural cooperation, on the other – border control, exile and exclusion. By reflecting on the relationships of social politics, cultural practices and migration processes, the symposium promotes interdisciplinary cooperation and encourages an exchange of experiences and perspectives with the audience. It intends to confirm migrations as a general principle, exploring their real and fictional possibilities outside the scope of the given borders. It draws attention to the risks of change and describes the (im)possibilities of finding one’s way in the situations of poor security, disorientation and a desperate struggle for optimism and togetherness in the times of building walls.

PROGRAM:

Jelena Prtorić (independent journalist): Life in Front of the Border – Unwanted Guests at Europe’s Door

After the European Union signed an agreement with Turkey in March 2016, the Balkans route was officially closed. Unofficially though, people are still crossing the borders along this route. There are approximately 5000 refugees registered in Serbia at the moment, and since Hungary intensified its measures of border control, the migrants have mostly been passing through Croatia. However, only few want to stay here. For most of them, this country is only a place of transit on their way to Western Europe. The largest number of refugees still enter Europe through Italy and many of them end up walking across the French border. On both sides of the border, the migrant stories are very much alike – they survive in inhumane conditions, receiving help from NGOs or benevolent locals, and the police often returns them (illegally) to the countries they come from. This lecture offers and insight into the situation on the borders, which are only purportedly closed, and reflects on the position of people who still travel to Europe, but their crossing of the borders is rarely documented in the media.

The Balkan refugee corridor, the humanitarian and safety formation developed by a number of states and protagonists at the end of 2015 and the beginning of 2016 along the Western Balkans route, may be described as a mobile detention. It consisted, on the one hand, of locked trains, buses and lines of people directed by police and, on the other hand, camps that represented a mandatory stop, a place where different routes meet. From January to April 2016, the authors stayed at the Winter Reception and Transit Center, i.e. the refugee camp in Slavonski Brod, on several occasions. At that time, the camp was the only place in Croatia where the refugees could stop on their way to Western Europe. The lecture will give an overview of methodological issues and research methods and procedures that the authors used during their stay at the camp (from the process of entering the field and the issues of researcher and participant roles, through observation and note taking to participation and interviews), which they consider significant for the understanding of the ways the camp functioned.

Marko Luka Zubčić (doctorand of “Philosophy and Contemporariness” at the University of Rijeka): Disequilibrium Utility: Bad Bets and Basic Goods

If we agree to the theory of social epistemology that the most successful social system is the one ofplurality and inclusiveness, then we are faced with a mass production of bad decisions. Can we form a social system in which the analysis of bad decisions would be used to improve the conditions for making better decisions? Can we employ some negative effects of human activities, such as mass tourism, waste and pollution to improve the production of basic goods? Disequilibrium Utility is an approach in designing such systems developed in collaboration with Ida Križaj Leko. The lecture will give an overview of the primarily epistemological aspect of Disequilibrium Utility and present a methodology for organizing the corresponding workshops.

Renato Stanković (Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Department of Cultural Studies, University of Rijeka): Cultural Policies as Social Policies
This lecture examines the roles of cultural policies in contemporary societies faced with the challenges of political turmoil, economic inequalities, technological revolution and other global process. Culture is a very complex discourse that, apart from the passive element of archiving and transfer of knowledge and opinions through time, contains an active element with critical and transformational potential. Do cultural policies have to extend into the sphere of social policies? Do civil society institutions and organizations, as well as individuals working in the field of culture, have enough capacity for such an orientation? This lecture will try to provide answers to these questions. It will also try to examine the ways in which strategic planning of art and culture can influence the level of awareness about important issues of contemporary society and see if any effective solutions can be found to these problems.

While we can virtually travel the world by speed of light with just few taps of the finger, in real life the movement of people is controlled with razor wires, fences and walls. The principles of traditional democracy are paralyzed in front of the increasing populism and false images of reality that simulate the voice of “the people”. Observing the world from such perspective, it seemed almost immoral to hold the 25th Slavonian biennial as the traditional literary festival, bearing in mind the powerful communication role and effects that art can have. The biennial’s theme and title, the (how long are) the Borders of Visibility, explored the power of memory and oblivion in bio-political relations of today’s world. The resulting exhibition, held in Osijek, the city that still bears the wounds and traumas of the recent war, has not came up with the solution yet, but it has made things visible.

Support: the EU program Creative Europe, the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Croatia, the City of Rijeka, EPK – Rijeka 2020

Black Disguises exhibition is part of the program called Kitchen – Center for Creative Migrations developed by the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art Rijeka within the framework of the four-year program of the European Capital of Culture, Rijeka 2020 – Port of Diversity.